In the commercial marketplace there exists a need for methods to establish the authenticity of articles of commerce between the time that they have been manufactured and their sale to an end user, or even beyond, to the time of their disposal. A variety of benefits are attained when an article or its packaging is provided with an identity mark or marks, including the ability to track and trace a specific article, to confirm or refute the identity of stolen, diverted, or counterfeited articles and/or their packaging. Numerous methods have been employed over the course of time to accomplish this; the simplest methods include a variety of overtly printed identifying text, trademarks, logos, symbols, images, or other identifying indicia. More covert identification methods are often employed in order to defeat the illegitimate diversion, counterfeiting or theft of articles having value sufficient to induce these behaviors.
Examples of covert methods include micro-printing, with printed characters too small for the unaided human eye to identify; images super- or sub-imposed over or under other images; marks made with fluorescent materials identifiable upon activation by a light source by the emitted visible fluorescent color, or with a wavelength of emission measurable by a spectrofluorimeter or simpler detection device, holograms, RFID tags, encoded text, markings or symbology susceptible of detection by decoding methods such as bar code readers, character recognition readers, and the like.
Fluorescent materials have been used in security applications as invisible, covert taggants in marks for authentication of items. The color and wavelength of the fluorescence, as well as the shape and size of the marks, are used to verify the authenticity of the item. Counterfeiters attempt to reproduce such a mark by matching its shape, size, color, wavelength and other distinguishing characteristics.
Therefore, there is a need for an authenticatable mark comprising a taggant that exhibit properties that can be authenticated.
There is also a need for a system and a method to prepare the marks.
There is a further need for a system and a method for reliably authenticating the marks.